I watched this because I'm a fan of Luke de Lacey, having enjoyed his work in "A Dance To the Music of Time." He acquits himself well here, and is as likable and sensitive as always. It was a surprise and a delight to realize that the cast of actors playing characters in this murder mystery also includes the elderly but dazzlingly beautiful Rita Davies, of whom I'm a big fan. Her face and her voice and delivery are riveting.
The show is quite different from American reality TV shows in that the real people chosen to act as investigators here are all basically decent. In America, the whole point is to pick mean-spirited egomaniacal narcissists, feed them tons of alcohol, and watch as they tear each other apart. I much prefer to see nice people being nice, even if they're not always perfect. Of course, I shouldn't exaggerate the nobility of English producers. I've seen an episode of 'Bad Lads Extreme,' and I don't think even America's Spike network, devoted to all things laddish, would ever show such a crew of sleazy, dimwitted, criminal scoundrels. So in England, I guess you have generally higher standards, which then veer away with some deviations lower than anything that would be tolerated in America.
The show's murder mystery is your classic English-manor affair, and I suppose some of the ways it resolves itself are a bit pat, since the case has to be solved and it has to be shaped into the nine episodes of the show.
Of course, if the point was truly to pick the 'best' amateur detective, you'd keep all of them through the end of the series, and have all of them try to solve the case. But as pretty much always with reality television, there's a weekly elimination element, and, again as always, it's handled pretty arbitrarily. The professional detective chooses the worst detective of the week, then the lead investigator chooses another person, and then each of the two grab one of a pair of envelopes which will direct them to some eerie, isolated site. At one site, there will be a clue. At the other site, your hideous fate at the hands of a murderer.
